


Dreaming Something Dark

by leporidae



Series: Mending Blue [2]
Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Blood and Gore, Body Horror, Eye Gouging, Eye Trauma, Gore, Hallucinations, Heavy Angst, Injury, Mental Instability, Self-Harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-09-03
Updated: 2019-09-03
Packaged: 2020-10-06 10:40:11
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,035
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20505611
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/leporidae/pseuds/leporidae
Summary: My right eye? The scar is healed now. It narrows my sight a little, but it does not interfere with fighting.





	Dreaming Something Dark

**Author's Note:**

> Set in some nebulous period during the five year skip.
> 
> The game didn't give me the horrible eyepatch lore I wanted, so I wrote it myself.

The Demonic Beast he fights has the taint of the Empire, the taint of  _ her _ all over it. It used to be a human being, this wretched creature, just like Dimitri. Now they are both savage animals, mutilating one another while dancing on the puppet strings of Edelgard’s machinations.

He rips the thing to shreds with his hands, tearing off plate after plate of its unnatural armor as the power granted by his Crest swells unnaturally within him. The beast's howls are otherworldly, just like Dimitri’s own strangled snarling as he digs deeper into its stony flesh. He kills the Demonic Beast with no remorse and very little effort, extinguishing what had once been a human heart; but he’s too close, and the creature flails with its dying moan, one virulent, dripping claw raking across Dimitri’s eye as it crashes to the ground with lurching finality. 

At once he knows the beast has poisoned him, veins of flame and pain exploding across his vision. And the poison will continue to spread, trickling through his limbs and rendering him immobile for Edelgard to kill him with her cold gaze. Dimitri closes his eyes, his right eyelid spasming with pain and pulsing blood. He sees her, standing over him, one hand poised over his neck with a dagger’s blade slick with blood belonging to his father and Glenn and Dedue and —

“Get out of my head!”

Dimitri roars, the sound echoing across the clearing where the creature lies slain, and his armored hand flies to his wounded eye, fingers trembling below the metal plates. Somehow even from this distance, perched on the Empire’s bloodstained throne, Edelgard has managed to infect him, crawled into his mind through the open wound and is pushing her way out like a hatching maggot. He has to get rid of it, scoop out her influence from his body before she burrows through him and bursts back out.  _ I can’t lose to her. _

“Edelgard… I will not let you… kill me first…”

His fingernails dig into the skin underneath his eyelid and he hears a soft squelch as his eye shifts unnaturally, still burning with pain from the poison. With those same fingers he has snapped necks and shattered bones, so this is nothing; the soft skin is so malleable, like the skin of a grape, stretching and popping under almost no pressure.

A thread snaps in his hand, and his vision warps, melting to black.

It’s bigger than he expected, sitting round and heavy in his cupped palm, but Dimitri can’t feel if it’s warm or cold through his armor, and with a whimper he tosses the eye aside, lost forever to a nameless patch of forest. A shrill ringing reverberates through his head, the screech of a migraine that has become almost comfortingly familiar. What if removing the infected receptacle hadn’t been enough? Are there still traces of that foul woman’s influence inside him? He gnashes his teeth at the thought, the claw of his gauntlet jerking upward and digging into the skin around the weeping socket.

“Hah —” Disgust overwhelms him and his metal nails bury deeper, a wild cackle racking his chest. Even with the eye gone the sensation of one is still there, a phantom pain, and he twists his fingers, mangling the sunken socket as he prays for everything to go numb. If he reaches in all the way, perhaps he can claw out the images his eyes had seen. Perhaps he can tear the ghosts out of his head so they never return —

“Stop,” Dimitri moans, slowly loosening the grip on his own pinched flesh. “Please, don’t make me do this… how will I avenge them if I’m…”

Dimitri starts laughing again, a sound that swells from somewhere he’s afraid of, and removes his fingers from the empty socket, slick with blood and aqueous fluid. Whatever he’s done certainly will heal terribly and leave him with nasty, unnatural scars; the thought makes him giddy, body shivering with a swell of perverse pleasure. 

He’s bleeding too much already, but he wants to drown in it, and he chomps down onto his lip, humming with deranged satisfaction as the skin splits with ease. Blood streams down his chin, bitter and metallic, and Dimitri spits off to the side, an act which doesn’t cleanse him in the slightest. Nothing can, not with years of blood of himself and others crusting his armor. 

The wave of possessed madness has subsided; a dull pain throbs the side of his face, the steady pulse reminding him of the steady pumping of blood from ruptured veins. He takes a step forward on unstable legs, the ground warping beneath his feet as he staggers, leaving a trail of red droplets behind him. For cover and a moment of respite from endless combat he ducks back into the trees, swatting at his own cheeks which have grown numb. 

Ahead there lies a stream, mercifully beckoning to him with soft gurgling, and Dimitri lunges towards the water, submerging his head as the cloud of his own blood swirls through his vision — red,  _ red _ , and  _ her  _ face swelling up through the red, those horns defying the goddess as she reaches through his father’s heart towards Dimitri. The sight makes him scream, and it bubbles through the water and into his lungs; he wrests himself from the water’s grasp with a splash, coughs wet and ragged.

There’s nothing reflected in the water when his blurred vision adjusts, but Dimitri backs up nonetheless, scrambling back wildly on palms until his shaking wrists give out and he collapses on his back into the damp earth, panting heavily.

The next imperial soldier that crosses his path becomes the recipient of Dimitri’s wild torment; with agonizing strength he leaps to his feet and makes quick work of them, torquing their neck to the side with a flick of his wrist and snapping the remaining limbs of the limp ragdoll for good measure, each  _ crack _ frail and fragile as Edelgard’s neck. From the soldier’s shattered arms he salvages the fabric of the dead man’s sleeves, wrapping it dispassionately around the gored side of his face to staunch its slow ooze.

And he continues on.

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
